Tag Archives: Urubamba

Come back every Wednesday for another funny, informative video documenting my inept food adventures. In Around the World in One City, I travel around the world and taste authentic dishes without ever leaving New York.

I first fell in love with Peruvian food like most people do, through tasting moist, tender rotisserie chicken. But that is such a small part of the wide variety this incredible cuisine has to offer.

On the second episode of Around the World in One City, I get as close to visiting Peru as possible. My friend Pedro Alarcon, who I met years ago when we both worked at Apiary, is from the rainforest areas of Peru and is the perfect guide to introduce me to such dellicacies as anticuchos, tiradito, and leche de tigre. We start with some hearty breakfast dishes at Broadway Bakery before finishing with a well-balanced feast at Urubamba.

From coast to mountains to jungle, the food of Peru is widely diverse and satisfyingly delicious. I was lucky enough to have a chance to visit the country itself this past year and I can assure you, if you don’t feel like hiking up Machu Picchu, hiking to Queens is the next best thing. Save yourself some calories and check out the adventures below.

For the fourth year in a row, I present the 100 most exciting dishes I’ve consumed during my food adventures around the five boroughs. Look for another five dishes every few days.

Whether you slurp them, chew them, or bite them, whether they’re filled with cheese, floating in a soup, or tossed with a sauce, pasta is certainly a universal food. They appear in just about every cuisine in many different shapes, sizes, and flavors. This year, these three noodle dishes won my heart.NUMBER 60: TABATA RAMEN at TABATA NOODLE

Lately New York has experienced ramen joints that are really stretching the imagination of what we understand as ramen. We’ve long surpassed the days of college ramen with horrifying flavor packets and now ramen is moving away from the traditional Japanese flavors. Tabata Noodle in Midtown specializes in ramen noodles with a Burmese touch (thanks to the heritage of the owner and most of his staff). Nowhere is that more obvious than in the coconut milk based namesake ramen. The Tabata has a milky broth that is thickened with soybean powder and a hint of spicy curry. Floating inside are springy noodles that soak up every last flavor of the slightly sweet, tropical broth, along with spicy chicken, the usual hard boiled egg, tangy red onions, and a kick of fresh cilantro. Unlike any ramen dish I’ve stumbled upon before. Price: $10

Every week, I document another dish that impressed and satiated me during my food adventures around New York City

The first time I had Peruvian food was at a now-closed restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen and I was shocked to taste a stir fry of beef, soy sauce, and french fries that reminded me more of Chinese-American food than Latin American. That dish was the popular lomo saltado and is a perfect example of Peru’s culinary diversity. In one cuisine, you can try the flavors of the Incas, the Japanese, the Africans, the Chinese, and the Spanish.

At Urubamba, an old standy in Jackson Heights, I decided to order only dishes that I never tasted before to expand my Peruvian palette and discover what other unexpected flavors might be lurking within the food.

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LOCALS KNOW: EXPERIENCE LISBON WALK in LISBON
AROUND THE WORLD IN ONE CITY: IRAN
AROUND THE WORLD IN ONE CITY: PERU
AROUND THE WORLD IN ONE CITY: GREECE
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A DAY IN THE LIFE
EAT THIS BOSTON: IN THE SOUP
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